Killers

Genre: Action/Comedy
Director: Robert Luketic
Cast: Ashton Kutcher, Katherine Heigl, Catherine O’Hara, Tom Selleck, Martin Mull, Rob Riggle, Casey Wilson, LeToya Luckett ,Katheryn Winnick, Sharan Masfield
RunTime: 1 hr 42 mins
Released By: Cathay-Keris Films & Encore Films
Rating: PG

What’s not to like of a romantic comedy with action to boot? Good looking leads with charm, tick. Romance, tick. Action, tick. Comedy, maybe. It’s a pity how one can feel let down by a movie such as Killers.
Our female lead is dumped and she goes on a trip to Nice with her supportive/protective parents. She meets hit-man/handsome hunk in all his ‘Godliness’. They fall in love and he quit. Three years later, amidst their domestic bliss, she discovers his true identity and grapples with being hunted by the people around them who are their so-called friends.

First of all, the movie is just not very funny. The chemistry between the leads are lacklustre and this is all the more a pity because both leads have proven their comedic chops with other co-stars in their previous works. Since The Butterfly Effect, I have given my vote of confidence to Ashton Kutcher in his ability to deliver insightful works. However, his movie choices have been baffling to date. Is it a case of his youthful good looks limiting his movie choices or does it boil down to his own lack of foresight in good movie roles?

But when the movie is produced by himself? What can I say but beseech Kutcher not to let me down once more! For a rom-com, the basic ingredients are the likability of the characters. Yes, both Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher are very likable but when they are put together, I can’t help but feel that they do not belong very much to each other. The romance part having been gone, the comedy part also proves to be a very average piece of work.

When the flirting, the side glances, the snide remarks, the arguments, the betrayal and especially the final denouement could have been played up, I somehow felt a bit let down. The saving grace lies in Hiegl’s parents, Tom Selleck with his very elegant moustache and role as protective dad and an alcoholic mum. But their screen time is so short that it is not enough to add another star to the rating of this movie.

Perhaps I have been expecting too much out of this movie, it’s a rom-com afterall. But as silly as What Happens in Vegas was, I had an absolutely side-splitting one and a half hours in the cinema and wanted to watch it again on DVD to embrace its’ goofiness and outrageous situation.
Killers is relegated to those movies where newly dating couples can watch for its superficiality and light laughs.